Wednesday, 29 October 2014

I
have bought several novels published byPersephone Booksfor myself or as presents either by ordering
online or visiting their exquisite shop in Conduit Street in London. They make
marvellous presents for reader- and writer-friends.

This
publisher - dedicated to reprinting neglected fiction and non-fiction mid
twentieth century books, mostly by women - must be unique on the contemporary
publishing scene in that they show high respect writers and readers and have a
brilliant sense of the aesthetic and physical nature of books.

This
was brought home to me when I came across a copy of their 2014 winter
catalogue calledThe
Persephone Biannually,It is
truly a beautiful object featuring paintings and images from the 20th Century
art and essays by contemporary writers which serve as forwards and afterwards
of the re-published novels.

I
was particularly delighted to readHarriet Evans's*
passionate and iconoclastic essay introducing Dorothy Whipple's novel
'Because of The Lockwoods.'It
is worth getting hold of Persephone Biannually just for this essay alone.
Like me you will be movedo to buy Dorothy Whipple's Persephone novel.

In
her essay of appreciation Harriet Evans says

'... the world of Literary London, for want of a better expression, is today
perhaps more sexist and snobbish (especially geographically snobbish), almost
unbelievably, than it was when she was writing, than in the time when she was
writing and the cultural tide of opinion and the cultural tide of of opinion,
is these days against her. Another reason why Whipple has been disregarded by
the literary mainstream is that we still live in a sexist world and in addition
one where writing from the North of England is undervalued.'

Looking
back on a lifetime of writing from the
North of England I can heartily endorse this.

*Harriet
Evans, now a very successful novelist, was once my own very much appreciated
editor. W.

Friday, 24 October 2014

All novelists have their
own vision of the nature of the novel,

Me? As a novelist I come from a lifetime of reading hundreds, probably
thousands of novels and writing a couple of dozen , I guess I have taken

Reading, writing, research -
all part of embarking on a novella

the
novel form for granted.

On reflection, in addressing the task of writing a novel I have seen it
as a long piece of work: a story of between eighty and a
hundred and twenty thousand words - with a distinctive range of characters; set
in an authentic time in history up to the present day; in a recognisable
place or moving between recognisable places in the world.

I would see the novel as
having a core group of varied and characters with one or more probably two
characters at the centre of this group, one of whom may be the narrator. In the
action of the novel the spotlight might fall on different members of the core group
at different times, often to illuminate the life journey, the transformation
and the quest of the central character.

Of course this is a lot of stuff , but the length of
the novel allows elbow-room to explore and illuminate all these aspects of a narrative.
I like the form because in many ways it fits the size and hyperactive nature of
my imagination. A novel can be leisurely, exploratory, urgent and illuminative
in part and in turn. It can explore different points of view and leave space
for the reader to join the narrative with her or his imagination and link it
all together into a shared fictive world.

Tension has greater or lesser a part to play in the long novel – it
informs the strong forward movement of the narrative and the character
development. Tension can be evident more strongly in the thriller, adventure or
crime genre – sending the reader hurtling through the novel alongside the hero
or villain figures. Other novels allow themselves a more leisurely approach to
their heroes’ journeys, allowing psychological exploration and thematic
speculation more space for the reader to enter the action.

So what might the novella – sometimes
called the ‘short novel’ - lose of all this in a form that only runs to a
length of – arguably - thirty to fifty thousand words?

One might argue that it should lose
nothing - except perhaps bodies. As one studies this form with its long
history in European literature and its hidden history (for reasons worth
exploring) in English language literature –one begins to realise that where the
novella is concerned, anything goes. Having recently read novellas in some
numbers it seems to me thar the only common denominator between novellas is
that they are short.

Brainstorming my new novella

Read some of my
initial thoughts in relation to JL Carr's Month in the Country. HERE

And log in
for further thoughts on the Novella on this page after our exploratory
Workshop at the Lafkaido Centre in Durham City tomorrow. Look HERE for Avril's take on our event.

Friday, 17 October 2014

Join me in Hartlepool at for my talk about
my novel Children of the Storm.This story starts one morning with pupil
teacher Mara Scorton, walking to school in Hartlepool on December 18th 1914, the day
Hartlepool was bombed by the Germans. Her pupils are coming from another
direction. He headmaster, the fearsome Mr Clonmel, is in the school, preparing
for his day,

My novel
re-imagines these events through the eyes of young Mara. Extract :

‘Mara turned a corner by one of the shipyards and nearly tripped
over a man in

working clo thes. He was kneeling by another man who was lying
white and still in the road. Beside him stood a much younger man nervously clutching
his cap. The man in the ground croaked something, but the man tending his shook
his head. ‘Ah canna make out a word he’s sayin’, Tadger,’ he said,

‘The gadgie’s a Frenchie,’ said
the younger man. ’Ah seen him down the dock, unloading, working like fury. The
lads telt us he was a Frenchie, like.’

‘That’s what he’s talking,’
said Mara. ‘French.’

‘D’yer ken that crack,
hinney?’ said the old man. ‘A bairn like you?’

The Bombardment

Hartlepool was
the first place on mainland Britain to be bombed by the Germans. In the
bombardment over 100 people died as more
than 1,000 shells rained down on the town for about 40 minutes from the three
heavy cruisers Blucher, Seydlitz and Moltke which emerged from the mist shortly
after 8am on December 16 1914. Amongst the casualties was Theo Jones, the first
soldier to die on British soil in the Great War.

At dawn, six miles east of Hartlepool, shots were exchanged between them
and the destroyers of the Local Defence Patrol who left to raise the

alarm.
No-one in the town heard anything. The ‘Seydiltz’, ‘Moltke’ and ‘Blucher’
continued to steam towards the nearest target and the rest headed for
Scarborourgh.

At 8.10 a.m. as the inhabitants were readying themselves for the day’s
work, the first shell was fired. They were aiming at the shore batteries and
the Lighthouse. The shell cut all the lines of communications between the
batteries throwing them into confusion.

By 8.25 a.m. most of the ships had
come as close as four thousand yards and had begun to pour their fire into the
gun emplacements and the docks. Some of the armour piercing shells had delayed
action fuses and a number bounced off the batteries into the town.

Henry Smith Terrace was
dangerously close to the action. There were hundreds of people milling about,
taken totally by surprise, the coastguards were doing their best to evacuate
everybody safely. The air was filled with black smoke, the screams of shells
passing overhead and the cries of children separated from their families. For
about three quarters of an hour the bombardment continued, 1,150 shells were
fired into the area killing 112 and wounding over 200.

Amongst the casualties was Theo Jones, the
first soldier to die on British soil in the Great War.

Note: Children
of the Storm is the middle novel in

Wendy Robertson's Kitty
Rainbow Trilogy.

.

Details
of Event:

Date: 21st Oct 14

Location: Central Library, 124 York Road,
Hartlepool, TS26 9DE

Phone:01429 272905

Time: 14:00 - 16:00

Cost: £2.00

From the brochure.

‘A talk with local author Wendy
Robertson.

Wendy Robertson is a renowned local
author of historical family stories, she will be talking about her work and
reading from her early novel Children of the Storm, which opens with the
Bombardment of Hartlepool.'

Tuesday, 14 October 2014

The central character Derek, around whom Peeling Oranges is built, is reading yellowing
letters from his mother, a heroine of revolutionary Ireland, to the man
Derek thinks is his father, then in post-Civil War in Madrid:‘…an initially neat hand succumbing to a spidery scrawl. A gush of
words, impatient for ink, flying in many directions, trying to find something
to stab. Written in Irish, Accent marks land randomly, surprising letters not
used to stress.’

We in England might think we share a history with Ireland. But
in reading this absorbing novel I understand again what I always suspected: it
is not the same history. As I read on, it dawned on me that we have more in
common with the French, our fellow world Imperialists. Only the different
languages divide us,

Yet we
think we share a language with the Irish. In fact we donated this English
language to the Irish by force and they cleverly imported into it elements of
their own and –as we know from the eminent writers in English emerging from
that tradition - transformed it into a thing of music and beauty.

The theme of language is a
strong undercurrent in this novel – almost a character in itself.
English is the tongue of the oppressors and yet is universally if unwillingly
used. Derek is scolded by Sinead for not speaking to her in Irish. Irish words
and names (and Spanish words and names …) are scattered through the novel like
a teasing code for the reader.

I was interested to learn that the Irish
language was used as a diplomatic code to thwart the English who, during World
War Two, had broken the Enigma Code but in four hundred years had never
bothered to learn Irish and had even punished children for speaking it. This
was especially important during and after the Spanish Civil war when Ireland officially
recognised the Franco regime. believing that this gave Ireland a separate
identity and and international recognition. This also made way for the
declaration of Irish neutrality in the Second World War.

Patrick, an Irish Diplomat at the court of General Franco in Madrid,
is the clearest and most unambiguous character in this novel. We hear his voice
through his letters and diaries, and get to know him through a visit the young
Derek makes to Madrid and Barcelona.In Peeling Oranges we move in time from the 30s to the
60s when the revolutionary war had moved to the North of Ireland
and the IRA and its heroes and heroines are still bedded in a narrative that
goes back four hundred years. This is symbolised in the persisting theme
of oranges in this novel – eating, peeling them at home, picking them in Spain
– the theme eventually echoed in the bitter taste of the Orange marches in
Belfast.

So far, so much information and insight. This might too much to
take in, if it were not for the fascinating narrative at its centre, where
Derek, the lonely, neglected son of a Revolutionary heroine, and in love with
such a girl of his own generation, struggles within a confusing mix of
identity, history, psychology and nationhood to discover just who he is as an
individual.

Derek is confused. His mother, once beautiful, is now old,
becoming senile. She continues her life- long habit of being cold, cruel and
rejecting towards him. Then he begins to read his father Patrick’s diaries and
papers. So Derek begins to create an image of an unhappy man, madly in love
with Derek’s mother, the Irish revolutionary heroine. Then there is the IRA
hero lurking in the shadows of his life. And then there is the girl Sinaed -
clever, committed and brave, determined to match her heroism to that of Derek’s
mother. But Derek is tentative, not made of
such heroic stuff. He struggles in the matrix of his parents’ history, hating
the English, honouring the Irish and trying to become his own self. In the
process he is driven unwillingly to kill and to witness the maiming of one close
to him.

This novel is a fluid mass of symbolism, ideas,
opinions and historical insights held together with literary efficiency by Derek’s tentative journey through his parents’
pasts into his own present. Effectively an orphan of the Revolution, he moves
on just into the post-revolutionary phase of an Ireland not secured by rusty
chains to the skirts of England, but emerging into the a-historical materialist
world as an independent nation in the European Community.

On the
cover: ‘A book to lose oneself in. Highly
recommended.’ Gabriel Byrne

Thursday, 9 October 2014

At present I am
transfixed by thoughts about contemporary fiction in the form of a novella,
although buried under the optimistic label of a novel,

The
reading has been interesting. ‘Novels’ by Henry James, Truman Capote, Joseph
Conrad, Thomas Mann – all have won great praise for books which have been
labelled ‘novels’ but which in their length (30 to 50 thousand words) and
form (focused, singular, obsessive) clearly meet criteria for the novella – or
what is now being called more neutrally, ‘short fiction’.

The
novella form has been something of a Sleeping Beauty up till now but has been
kissed into visibility by the widespread emergence of eBooks where length is an
invisible factor.

A Month in the Country

Knowing my present obsession my
friend Pat steered me in the direction of A Month in the Country by J.
L Carr. This is a real treasure - an outstanding 'novel' which won the
Guardian Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, as was another
of H.L. Carr’s novels.

The Small Tale

In his forward Carr quotes a
definition by Dr Johnson. ‘A novel - a small tale, generally of love.'

The year is 1920. Recovering from
shell shock which persists as a facial twitch, Tom Birkin arrives in a sleepy
Yorkshire village to restore ancient murals in its tiny church. As he slowly
uncovers the medieval images of heaven and hell he is imbued by a sense of the
medieval painter who first laid paint on these walls. Outside the church he
meets the archaeologist Moon who is digging a portentous hole outside the
church. Moon another man constructing his own survival after savage war
experiences. Further into the shadows are the sour vicar and his beautiful wife
both shell shocked by the exigencies of daily life. On the lighter edge are
Mossop the stationmaster – the voices of kindness and reason - and his
daughter.

This complex work with its elaborate over-weaving of character and story and
under-weaving of universal themes is told in clean prose which extends to a
powerful evocation of weather and landscape that binds man to the world and can
make a man’s spirit whole.

In the
introduction in my edition Penelope Fitzgerald says, ‘Carr is by no means a
lavish writer but he has the magic touch to enter a re-imagined past.’

Size Isn’t Everything

A Month in the Country is only thirty five thousand words long. But there is nothing
small about this tale where Tom Birkin uncovers the painting on the wall
and intuits some deep truths about the man who painted them, at the same time
waking from the long nightmare of fighting in the trenches,

Seen through Tom Birkin’s eyes, structurally near perfect, very readable
and drenched with powerful meaning, this tale even has an intriguing revelation
towards the end which, on examination, has been bedded into the story so far.

Some writers might need a hundred thousand words to weave this amount of
meaning and literary magic into a story. H.L Carr managed it on thirty five
thousand words. That is the potential power of the novella. No small thing.

The Writer

H L Carr was a stubborn
anti-establishment autodidact who disliked London ways. He was a teacher,
traveller, small publisher and writer who knowingly and sometimes mischievously
wove his own life right through his fiction and published novels right into his
late seventies. His own life - find out from Byron Rogers' insightful,
affectionate biography The Last Englishman- has the slightly manic tone of
a picaresque novel.

The Novella

Thank you Pat for pointing me in the direction of A Month in the
Country - no small thing but a very fine – I now insist - novella! Having
read this great story I now have a brilliant benchmark for what may be adjudged
a fine novella.

Laughter and great conversation at last night's Room To Write celebration for the winners and shortlisted writers in our

Today, from Ruth Henderson, short-listed writer, to us at 'Room to Write':

Dear Avril, Wendy and Gillian. Thank you for a lovely time
last evening, it was good to talk to all the short listed writers, there's
always a new friend to make. Listening to why the judges liked a particular
story was so interesting, I'm looking forward to reading them all. ...You
were all so kind to me, seeking me out to talk about my work. it was
obvious all the judges really had read every story, and, although I'm sure Pat
Barker was kind to all of us, I was thrilled when she spoke to me with such knowledge
and understanding of my story. so once again, many thanks and i wish
success to you all and continuing prestige for Room to Write'
Ruth

Sally Wylden - , short-listed writer - talking to Pat Barker

Writers Eileen Elgey and Liz Gill celebrate in style

Our Winner Christine Powell in the peace gardenat the Lafcadio Hearn Peace Garden at Lafkadio Hearn Centre at Teikyo University at Durham

Novelist Pat Barker who presented the prizes talking to two winners Christine Powell and John Adams

rachel cochrane in earnest conversation with writers. Rachel will record the winning stories for her broadcasting website

Ruth Henderson - short listed writer - in conversation.Behind her Mike Daley Bursar of Teiko University of Japan in Durham.

LinkWithin

Read The Bad Child 5* Review

Click image for more. 'The Bad Child is a beautiful modern day fable,showing the intricate development from misunderstood teenager to the dawn of a happier future. Wendy Robertson with her infinite humanity weaves a complex and passionate story. It is highly readable.

New Title Writing at the Maison Bleue

Inspired by my time in the Languedoc

Read 'The Pathfinder'

5 * Review: 'Wendy Robertson is a consummate practitioner of the crossover novel, one foot in the 'now' the other in the 'then' but with this book she has planted both feet firmly on the same historical path and the results are wonderful.'

Stop Press

So happy that Bad Child is on the long list for this prizel.

AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN FRANCE

Booklist :"...In this eerie, atmospheric paranormal novel, Robertson deftly intertwines two time periods, slowly absorbing one into the other through her remarkably likeable protagonist.